Andrews Inn
Photo by Jeremy Youst. Collection of Andrews Inn Oral History Project.
Photo by Evie Lovett
I got into it because Tom and Jeremy were working—they were the general partners of Sundial Associates. I was a—I came in as a limited partner, and I got into it because I was friends with, and sort of a protégé of, their attorney, guy named Bill Dorsch, who also became an investor in the end. Bill and Ellen also put up some of the money. And what had happened was, I mean, well, this is all my perspective on it. John Moisis had been running the inn as a sort of underground gay inn for a while. It had been an old railroad hotel. His parents had been running it. It wasn't making any money. They were talking about just sort of going down in flames, and John said, "I got an idea. Why don't you let me run it?"
And so he started running it as a, as a gay establishment, but with no sort of public acknowledgment of that. Tom and Jeremy came along. They got interested in it. They really wanted to turn it into an openly gay establishment. So they entered into a contract to purchase the place. There was a financing contingency on it. Vermont National Bank had agreed to do the financing. Then at the 11th hour, the bank officers Vermont National Bank had just realized that, "Oh, my God, these guys are gay and they're going to run it as a gay inn!" So they had a total freak out about it. And they tried to pull out of the deal, at which point Bill Dorsch, who can be incredibly convincing, convinced them that they did not really want to be litigating this all the way from here to, you know, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City. And they came back and said, "Okay, we we will stick by our commitment, but not, you know, we won't budge on compromising the amount of money you guys have to put up. And we won't give you one minute more than is in the contract right now. No extensions, no nothing." So. So Tom and Jeremy really had their backs against the wall. And Bill said, "Oh, I know somebody." I was actually in law school at the time. He said, "I know somebody who might be willing to put up the rest of the money." So he called me, and I agreed to put up the rest of the money. So that closed the deal. And it was when I first actually met Tom and Jeremy was in Bill Dorsch's office. It was a really wonderful moment there with Tom, where Tom looked at me and he said, well, "I want you to know that not everybody involved in this project is gay." And I looked at him and said, "That's their business." And I was actually kind of dismissive in my tone. But it was like I think he just, he reacted to that by saying, "This is good." — Fletcher Proctor